'New York' Mag on the Rise of the Dollar Slice

New York magazine today runs a page in its Intelligencer section about the rise of dollar slices over the last year, with the surprising fact that "the materials used in an average pizza slice cost around 30¢."

There's also an interesting tidbit that says that Joe's on Carmine Street "has served only one slice of Hawaiian pizza in its 37-year history — to a longtime customer who was pregnant and craving."

Richard Morgan, who assembled these factoids for this piece, also emailed Slice with some more intel that didn't make it into the piece — that the 99¢ Fresh Pizza place claims to go through 3,200 to 4,000 slices a day. A day. Says Richard:

The math turns out to be one slice every 21.6 seconds. When you convert the 5¢ price of Lombardi's pizza in 1905, that works out to $1.22 in 2009 dollars (averaging the four most popular methods of determining that inexact number). So these dollar prices are actually cheaper for us than they were for folks in 1905.

Thanks for the extra intel, Richard. And cool piece. I especially like the chart that graphs the increases in both slice and subway fares over the years. Wish I would have thought of that!

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About the Author

Adam Kuban is the founder of Slice, where he has been writing about pizza since October 10, 2003. He also founded A Hamburger Today, but burgers don't really do much for him these days. If you find Adam anywhere on SE these days, it's primarily in Talk and in the comments of Slice. He has taken an extended hiatus from his weekly pizza reviews and monthly Home Slice feature while he explores the actual work of pizza-making at Paulie Gee's in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.